


Unknown Number

by Ribbonsflying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Angst, Crying, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kindness, M/M, No Beta, Phone Calls & Telephones, Strangers, even strangers, free therapy, talking to someone is free therapy, we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24196450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonsflying/pseuds/Ribbonsflying
Summary: Bucky actually programmed the number into his cell phone and saved it under “Call drops. Speak quickly!” so he would remember for whenever the person tried to contact him again.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 83
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Unknown Number

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for the "Angst" square on my Bucky Barnes Bingo card.
> 
> Read the spoilery notes at the end if you're concerned about the "referenced character death" tag.

Bucky’s phone buzzed late one evening when he was out with Natasha having drinks and catching up. He was new in town and the phone was sleek and had a new case and he pulled it out of his pocket with an internal giddy feeling, but the thing stopped buzzing almost immediately and he looked at the unknown number.

It was a local number. Bucky didn’t know it. Locally, he only knew Natasha and the handful of customers he had met at his new job and he hardly expected it was any of them calling at 10:40 in the evening. He worked in electronic repair. He enjoyed his job, but it wasn’t the kind of job that had loyal customers calling at all hours just to hear his voice. 

“Who was that?” Natasha asked and Bucky shrugged.

“Unknown.”

“Local number,” Natasha commented. “Or they spoofed a local number. Could just be a robocall or something.”

Bucky shrugged and agreed and slid the phone back into his pocket and didn’t think any more about it.

=*=*=

Three days later, Bucky was still sound asleep around 5:50 or so in the morning when his phone rang out again.

He jolted out of his sleep and fumbled for it. If someone was calling him at this hour, it had to be very important.

He knew he sounded like Batman when he slid his finger across the device and managed a rough, “Hello?”

There was a shaky breath on the other end of the line and then the line went dead.

Bucky was so asleep that it took him a second to even register, but then he looked at his phone in confusion and clicked the screen off and went back to sleep.

=*=*=

It wasn’t until about a week and a half later when it happened a third time that he realized it was all the same number.

He was sitting in his tiny shop fixing a loose wire inside some kid’s cheap tablet when the phone on his desk started ringing. 

He dropped the pliers he was holding on the tabletop and reached for the phone, but could hear them hang up before the receiver ever reached his ear.

The name flashed across the caller ID of the shop phone and he recognized the last few digits. Bucky reached for his own phone and navigated to his received calls. 

The number was the same as the missed calls he had from before.

The phone on his desk forwarded to the mobile device whenever he wasn’t at work. He was new in town and needed to make sure he didn’t miss a call if he wanted to build the business so he had set up both phones and hadn’t thought any more about it until he realized that the unknown number wasn’t calling his cell number, but his shop one.

“Ah. Well, it may be something I can fix,” he told the phone even though there was no one there. “Or it may be a service problem. I’ll speak quicker if you call again.”

Bucky actually programmed the number into his cell phone and saved it under “Call drops. Speak quickly!” so he would remember for whenever the person tried to contact him again.

=*=*=

Bucky actually forgot about it after that. The number didn’t call back. Bucky wasn’t woken up stupidly early or interrupted when he was trying to go to sleep. He would say he wrote it off as a potential customer just finding someone else to fix his phone problem, but honestly, he didn’t even think that about it because he just forgot about the call altogether.

Then one night about two months later, he sat in his little shop again, but this time around midnight or a little after, the phone rang. 

He actually jumped out of his skin because the sound was so unexpected. But he grabbed his cell phone up off the desk (it didn’t go to the landline since it was after hours for the shop) and he noticed the caller. 

_Call drops. Speak quickly!_

He scooped it up in a hurry and swiped the screen.

“Hi. If you think it’s a hardware issue, you can drop it by anytime. I’ll take a look at it free of charge. If I can’t fix it, it won’t cost you.”

He finished all of his words in one breath and waited. He hadn’t even started with the company name and a friendly greeting. He had just been in a rush before the call dropped again.

But the call didn’t drop.

Bucky listened to the silence at the other end of the line and then all at once he heard an unmistakable shaky breath and someone whisper,

“Sorry.”

And the line went dead.

Bucky pulled his phone away from his ear and looked at it a second, but something wouldn’t let him just click the screen locked and slide it aside again. So instead, he navigated to his recent calls and he barely even hesitated before he tapped the contact to call them back and held the phone to his ear.

It rang and it suddenly hit Bucky that he had no idea what he was going to say to this person. They were a complete stranger. They had intentionally hung up. It was obvious they didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even know why they kept calling.

Except that he did. In his heart of hearts he just knew and so when the shaky voice picked up with a weak, “Hello?” he asked what he had to.

“Whose number did they give me?”

The man at the other end of the line shattered. 

Bucky could hear heavy sobs, ones that would shake the man’s body and make his eyes all red and soak his eyelashes and heat his face and neck.

He didn’t reply.

So Bucky kept talking.

“I’m so sorry,” he started. “I don’t know who used to answer when you called, but it’s obvious they meant a lot to you. And I’ve lost a lot of people in my life and I know that sometimes recovery and healing come in short spells and uncertain waves. It’s okay.”

“My mom,” the voice at the other end of the line answered. “I want my mom.”

Bucky closed his eyes. He sat back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling and only said quietly, “My mom’s gone too.”

The man made some kind of garbled apology that Bucky couldn’t decider through the line.

“I know you’re in pain, but if you need to talk, I’m a completely inconsequential, unbiased, and objective third party that is willing to listen.”

The man was quiet a few moments as he collected himself. Bucky wasn’t really sure what to expect as part of him expected the man to reject the offer, apologize again, and hang up, but another part of him wondered if he was about to hear about this woman’s horrible battle with cancer or a car accident coming home from work one night. He wasn’t sure which would be worse- the sense of knowing someone out there was in pain and not talking about it or a complete stranger making him feel and remember things about his own late parents that would most likely emotionally compromise him at a time when he had planned to simply be working.

“She loved hot air balloons,” the man started. “When I was little, she took me to all these hot air balloon festivals all over New England. And four years ago, we got to do what we always said we were going to: we went to this giant one they have every year in Albuquerque. Biggest one in the world. Thousands of people, over five hundred balloons. She retired and we had been saving our money and we went and had this just incredible time, you know? Well, there’s this special coming on TV tomorrow about the largest hot air balloon festivals and that one should be on there and some others we maybe visited. I didn’t even think. I just-“

Bucky heard him sniffle again and he thought the man wiped his eyes.

“Yeah,” he understood. It was hard for lifelong habits to die even if the person they were associated with was gone.

“She would have enjoyed something like that,” the other man said gently. “She enjoyed simple, beautiful things: hot air balloons, sand art, parades, walks on the pier, music boxes. She taught me to embroider. It wasn’t really popular with all of the other middle schoolers or high schoolers, but they had to babysit and do lawn work, paint fences, and walk dogs for extra money and I got to sit home watching TV and embroider. And then I made more money for my work. Everyone should have had a mom like mine.”

“What’s her name?” Bucky asked.

“Sarah,” the man replied. “And um, I’m Steve, by the way. I just kind of unloaded on you without even saying my name.”

Bucky smiled and moved to sit back up at his desk.

“My name’s Bucky.”

“Well, Bucky, I’m sorry for calling. I called you a few times a week after she passed. I did all of the funeral stuff, but it was still like it hadn’t sank in somehow. It didn’t feel real. I just would want to know how to wash something or how to cook something and I’d hit speed dial before I ever even thought about it. She was always up these crazy hours. She used to work second shift and used third shift hours to do housework and wind down or do whatever she needed to do. I always bothered her in the middle of the night and I’m sorry if I messed up your sleep or whatever.”

Bucky shook his head a bit even though Steve couldn’t see it. 

“I’m okay. You haven’t bothered me. I just moved back to New York after moving away when I finished college. I opened a shop where I work on people’s computers, tablets, cell phones, game consoles, what have you. And I’m up these crazy hours too. I’m just working here by myself and there isn’t anything going on, so Steve? If you ring me in the middle of the night, it doesn’t inconvenience me at all. I’m just here working.”

There was a small pause before Steve just said again, “Thanks, man.”

“It’s a process, Steve. And even then, it’s a process that doesn’t end. You’ll have days where you think of her and smile brightly and laugh at memories. And you’ll have days where you cry in public before you even realize you’re about to do it. You’ll be comforted by something small- a word or a scent or a sound, but something that small can also throw you off balance as well. And progress isn’t lateral. You’ll feel differently at different times and while people say, ‘It gets easier with time,’ what they mean isn’t really that it gets easier. They just mean it gets easier not to think about that ache all day and night. The pain gets further removed and the good memories surface more often than the feeling of loss.”

“I just feel so hollow all the time.”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied. “It’ll feel that way a while. But don’t let it stop you. You have to live for the both of you now- both for yourself and because it’s what she would have wanted. At no point would she ever want her son to hurt or give up, but she would understand the hurt. And I didn’t know her, but I don’t think she would understand the giving up. Am I right?”

Steve sniffed again. 

“Yeah. Yeah, she never gave up. Never let me give up either. And we went through some rough times when I was little. My dad died when I was a year old. She kept going. I got sick two hundred times. And she always was there for me. She nursed me back to health every time. We were so poor at times. And I never missed a meal. And I never missed a bedtime story or hug and kiss. My artwork hung on every wall in the house my entire life. I went into the military and was MIA for months. She never lost faith. She championed me on in everything. Nothing was too much for her.” 

“She seems like she was a remarkable woman.”

Steve sounded somewhat lighter when he answered, “She was.”

There was a silence in the air between them for a moment- the heaviness of the situation moving out and something lighter slowly taking its place.

“Listen, Bucky,” Steve said again. “I appreciate you listening and understanding.”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky closed his eyes. “Everyone needs someone to listen sometimes.”

“Yeah, I needed that,” Steve agreed. “Didn’t realize how much it would help just saying something about it to someone.”

“It always helps to talk,” Bucky replied, opening his eyes again and smiling softly to himself. “How about you make me a deal? Now, I don’t have a wife or boyfriend or anything that I live with. I don’t even have a dog that you’ll set off if my phone rings, so you make me a deal that if things go bad or if things go good, if you get a promotion at work or you decide to take a cool vacation or you have a really shitty client or you get food poisoning that you’ll call me back and talk to me. I don’t promise to know how to wash out a certain stain or cook a particular meal, but I’ll give it my best shot. I can’t be your mom, but I can be a friend, a caring voice at the end of the line.”

He was pretty sure he heard Steve wiping tears again.

Bucky didn’t need any words for a reply. He only added, “Anytime, anywhere, call me. I will be here to listen.”

Steve’s voice was quiet, but not shaking or upset when he answered him. 

“I will. I promise. Thank you.”

And from that night on, whenever Steve needed someone to talk with, he kept his promise. And so did Bucky.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like friends, so do I and my tumblr is [here](https://ribbonsflyingoutthewindow.tumblr.com). ♥
> 
> In case you're hesitant because of the "referenced character death" tag, I will let you know there is a good bit of talk about Steve's mother who has recently passed. Steve is actively grieving her loss.


End file.
